of his work to the Prince of Wales, Shakspere's Prince Hal. It is founded, he says, on Aristotle's 'boke of governaunce' (the supposed correspondence between Aristotle and Alexander which made so deep an impression on the mediæval mind), and the work of Aegidius above mentioned; he has also studied the work of Jacobus de Cessolis (Casali) called The Chess-moralized1; and the fruits of these studies he now presents to the Prince. The poem is not interesting. The various aspects under which his duty presents, or ought to present, itself to the mind of a ruler are considered successively under the heads of justice, good faith, temperance, mercy, prudence, deliberation, and so forth.

Other poems ascribed to Occleve are the story of Gerelaus emperor of Rome and his virtuous empress, and that of Jonathas and the three jewels. Both these are from the Gesta Romanorum: they have never been printed, but the story of Jonathas was modernised by Browne and introduced into the Shepherd's Pipe (1614). Some of his minor poems were edited in 1798 by a Mr. Mason. The longest of them, La male régle de T. Hoccleve, exhibits a picture of the jovial and riotous life led by the poet in his younger days, which is in complete accordance with that presented in the proem to the De Regimine.

T. ARNOLD.

1 One of the first books printed by Caxton, under the name of The Game and Play of the Chesse.

FROM THE PROEM TO THE 'DE REGIMINE PRINCIPUM.'

But wele awaye, so is myn hertë wo,

That the honour of English tounge is deed,

Of which I was wonte have counseil and rede.

O maister dere and fader reverent,

My maister Chaucer! floure of eloquence,
Mirrour of fructuous entendement,

O universal fadir in science,

Allas! that thou thyne excellent prudence
In thy bedde mortel myghtest not bequethë;
What eyled Dethe? allas, why wold he sle the?

O Dethe, that didest not harmë singulere

In slaughtre of hym, but alle this lond it smerteth ;
But natheles yit hast thow no powere

His name to slee; his hye vertu asterteth
Unslayne fro the, whiche ay us lyfly herteth'
With bookës of his ornat endityng,

That is to alle this londe enlumynyng.

Hastow 2 nat eek my maistre Gower slayne?
Whos vertu I am insufficient

For to descreyve, I wote wel in certeyne:
For to sleen alle this world thow hast y-ment,
But syn oure Lord Christ was obedient
To thee, in feyth I can no better seye,
His creaturës musten thee obeye.

FROM THE 'DE REGIMINE PRINCIPUM.'

Symple is my goste1, and scars my letterure,
Unto youre excellence for to write

Myne inward love, and yit in aventure

Wol I me put, thogh I can but lyte;

My derë maister,-God his soulë quyte,

And fader, Chaucer, fayne wold have me taught,
But I was dulle, and lerned lyte or naught.

Allas! my worthy maister honorable,
This londes verray tresour and richesse,
Dethe by thy dethe hath harme irreperable
Unto us done: hir vengeable duresse
Dispoiled hath this londe of the swetnesse
Of rethoryk, for unto Tullius

Was never man so like amongës us.

Also, who was hyër in phylosofye
To Aristotle in our tunge but thow?

The steppes of Virgile in poysye

Thou folwedest eke: men wote well ynow.

That combre-worlde 2, that the my maister slowe, (Wolde I slayne werë!) dethe was to hastyf

To renne on the, and revë the thy lyf.

She myght han taryed hir vengeaunce a whyle,
Tyl sum man hadde egal to the be;
Nay, let be that; she wel knew that this yle
May never man forth bringë lik to the,

And hir office nedys do must she;

God bad hire soo, I truste as for the beste,
O maystir, maystir, God thy soule reste !

1 mind.

2 bane of the world; viz. death.

3 slew.

JAMES THE FIRST

OF SCOTLAND.

[BORN 1394. Captured by the English in time of peace 1405, and kept a prisoner in the Tower, in Nottingham Castle, at Croydon, and at Windsor, till 1424, when he was released. In that year he married Lady Jane Beaufort, daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and granddaughter of John of Gaunt. She was the heroine of his principal poem, The King's Quair. In 1437, after reigning thirteen years in Scotland, the king was assassinated at Perth. Besides The King's Quair, he is commonly supposed to have written one or two other poems, notably the humorous ballad Christ's Kirk on the Green.]

James the First of Scotland is one of the earliest and one of the best of the imitators of Chaucer, and is the first of that line of Scottish poets who kept the lamp of poetry burning during the darkness of the fifteenth century. His chief poem, The King's Quair, or the King's Book, seems to have been written in 1423 or 1424, about the time of his marriage; when he was thirty years old and when Chaucer had been in his grave nearly a quarter of a century. The King's Quair, written in the seven-lined stanza, is about 200 stanzas long, and it tells in a style that is a curious mixture of autobiographical fact and allegorical romance the story of the captive king's courtship of the lady who became his wife, Lady Jane Beaufort. The royal prisoner, after a sleepless night spent in reading Boethius, rises at the sound of the matins bell and begins to complain of his fortune. Suddenly in the garden beneath he sees a lady, so beautiful that he who has never known

love till now is instantly subdued, the nightingale and all the other birds singing in harmony with his passion. The lady disappears, and half-sleeping, half-swooning, he dreams of a strange sequel. He seems to be carried up 'fro spere to spere' to the Empire of Venus; he wins her favour, but since his desperate case requires ‘the help of other mo than one goddesse,' he is sent on with Good Hope for guide to the Palace of Minerva. The goddess

of Wisdom receives him with a speech on Free Will; and finally, after an interview with the great goddess Fortune herself, he wakes to find a real messenger from Venus, 'a turture, quhite as calk,' bringing him a flowering branch, joyful evidence that his suit is to succeed :

""Awake! awake! I bring, lover, I bring

The newis glad that blissful ben and sure
Of thy confort; now laugh, and play, and sing,
That art beside so glad an aventure;

For in the hevyn decretit is the cure."
And unto me the flouris did present;

With wyngis spred hir wayis furth sche went.'

With this and with the poet's song of thankfulness The King's Quair ends.

No subject could be better fitted than the love-story of the captive king for a poem in the accepted trouvère style. The paganism of romance was fond of representing man as passive material in the hands of two supernatural powers, Fortune and Love; and poetry for two centuries was for ever returning to the theme. James the First was neither original enough to depart from the poetical conventions of his time, nor artist enough to work out his subject without confusion and repetition; and yet the personal interest of his story and its adaptability to the chosen form of treatment would be enough to save The King's Quair from oblivion, even without the unquestionable beauty of much of the verse. The dress is the common tinsel of the time, but the body beneath is real and human.

We have said that King James was an early and close imitator of Chaucer1. His nineteen years of captivity allowed him to steep himself in Chaucer's poetry, and any Chaucerian student who reads The King's Quair is constantly arrested by a line or a stanza or a whole episode that exactly recalls the master. It is unneces

1 The concluding stanza of the poem is as follows:—
'Vnto impnis of my maisteris dere,

Gowere and Chaucere, that on the steppis satt
Of rethorike, quhill thai were lyvand here,
Superlatiue as poetis laureate,

In moralitee and eloquence ornate,

I recommend my buk in lynis seven,

And eke thair saulis vnto the blisse of hevin.'